A random sample of ten 2011 sports cars is taken and their city mileage is recorded. The results are as follows: 20 21 25 21 21 23 31 32 28 26 Assuming the population distribution is normal, compute E, the margin of error for the t interval, for a 90% confidence interval for m, the population mean of the city mpg for 2011 sports cars.

Step-by-step explanation:

Previous concepts

A confidence interval is "a range of values that’s likely to include a population value with a certain degree of confidence. It is often expressed a % whereby a population means lies between an upper and lower interval".

The margin of error is the range of values below and above the sample statistic in a confidence interval.

Normal distribution, is a "probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean".

represent the sample mean for the sample  

population mean (variable of interest)

s represent the sample standard deviation

n represent the sample size  

Solution to the problem

The confidence interval for the mean is given by the following formula:

  (1)

In order to calculate the mean and the sample deviation we can use the following formulas:  

(2)  

(3)  

The mean calculated for this case is

The sample deviation calculated

In order to calculate the critical value we need to find first the degrees of freedom, given by:

Since the Confidence is 0.90 or 90%, the value of and , and we can use excel, a calculator or a table to find the critical value. The excel command would be: "=-T.INV(0.05,9)".And we see that

And the margin of error would be given by:

32

step-by-step explanation: